(no subject)
title: bullets in your teeth
author: chartre
rating: pg
pairing: nishikato
summary: kato is the name of their new neighbor. he’s perfect, and ryo didn’t care to elaborate any further.
notes: fiction. some trace hints of bitter ryopi; you'll get it once you get to it. :)
Bullets in Your Teeth
nishikato
They aren’t much. Just two insignificant individuals living together in a simple apartment, bordered by the term of their best-friendship. Everything comes, and everything goes. Someone moves in right above their unit and it’s not much news to them, so to speak.
They are more of just plain neighbors than a group of friends living in the same apartment. Someone ought to change that when the newcomer finally arrived.
Kato is the name of their new neighbor. They learn that he isn’t so different. He’s usually in between a few things; a few insignificant things, and that would make him less than the lot of what perfect is. But insignificant or not, he is perfect; the perfect newcomer with large wandering eyes, awkward beginnings and the curiosity that lingers. He’s perfect, and Ryo didn’t care to elaborate any further.
Pi hasn’t met him yet. He hasn’t seen him in the flesh, but Ryo tells him he’s beautiful, and Pi imagines a shorter-than-Ryo boy with pretty eyes, rosy cheeks and skinny shoulders. Almost like that boy named Tegoshi who lives across their apartment (just because he always catches Ryo staring at his baby face). Pi doesn’t know much and Ryo tells him he’s in love. Pi doesn’t do much but laugh a little. “Whatever, Ryo.”
The change isn’t so sudden, really. More of slow than gradual, even, and it starts with a welcoming gift of a few flowers. That isn’t a lot to take note of for a couple of non-classy guys like them.
One day Ryo comes home, keys ready in his pocket and he sees a note stuck to the front door. Under him is a bunch of fruits. Ryo reads thank you! in legible words, with his name signed right beneath it. Pi comes home later in the afternoon. There’s nothing on the front door, but behind it is a giddy and jumping Ryo, all teeth and wide smiles. “He said thanks!”
Pi rolls his eyes and doesn’t give a damn. “Whatever, Ryo.”
The following week they get invited to have dinner with Kato. Pi thinks his roommate has conspired a plot to invite himself without making it look like he invited himself. This dinner is for all three of them, really, but Pi thinks it’s a little too personal to be having neighborly dinners like this. And so he passes.
Before he even realizes it, Ryo’s out of the apartment, walking up the stairs and knocking on his door. He hears murmurs while he’s trying to catch up on reading, something like I hope you like pasta, and where’s your roommate and it’s loud enough to hear and suppose that it’s a conversation from the kitchen to the dining room. Pi tries not to listen and later regrets it when he hears a reply to that: don’t worry about him, we don’t need him.
A little too personal for a neighborly dinner.
A little too personal per se, when Pi starts to notice the quiet of the apartment without Ryo. He’s never home anymore, and he slowly realizes that he’s nowhere far from the apartment, but he’s definitely not spying on Tegoshi anymore. Pi thinks he maybe hates Ryo now.
A month passes. Four weeks, and something happens all too quickly for the bitter roommate of the presumptuous. This time, Ryo invites Kato into their apartment more often, and Pi finally meets him face to face. He’s everything Ryo earlier mentioned to the physical and objective aspect-wide eyed, broad shoulders, pouty lips and quite tall (probably too tall for Ryo)-though he’s nothing Ryo described him to be, flowery words and biases attached-pretty, cute and amiably pleasant. No, there ought to be something wrong with the man’s vision.
Pi keeps his distance from Kato; from them both, and mostly stays in the next room where he can’t see them. He doesn’t need to know him to hate him (though conveniently, he knows his name is Shigeaki; Ryo takes to calling him Shige for short), but by the way Ryo looks at him, handles him with so much care-too much care, almost like a porcelain doll-Pi feels the bitter resentment boiling beneath his skin.
A few more weeks pass. A few more waltzes out of their way and Ryo finally sits Pi down for a good, casual chat. Pi starts to feel the hate subside, slowly. Maybe he doesn’t hate them. Maybe he doesn’t hate Ryo. Maybe he’s just being a little irrational.
In the morning on their way out for a morning jog, they see Kato by the sidewalk with his dog. His hair is a mess, his clothes are worn loose, and when he turns, it’s something different with a touch of a bright something, drunken with shape and color. Pi could maybe understand Ryo’s obsession, watching his roommate walk away and towards Kato, arm slung over his shoulder and he stutters a quiet hello that’s strangely sweet, even to Pi’s ears. He is gorgeous this way, and there is probably no denying that.
But maybe, maybe Pi doesn’t understand. He still doesn’t get it.
He thinks maybe he should hate them a little more for that.
In three months, it happens. It finally happens, and Pi doesn’t think he can forgive himself, what more forgive Ryo at all.
“We’re dating,” he says and watches him smile so wide when Kato’s lips murmur his petty little secrets, their heads bent together. Pi can see it, the way Ryo holds Kato’s waist tight against his, the way his shoulders angle towards the boy and away from him. It’s disgusting, he tells himself. So he shuts the apartment door and sits quietly by himself in the bathroom.
Day by day, things slowly change. Pi can’t help but feel his rage build up slowly each day, and it’s distressful even for his own self.
They’re attending a dinner party with a few close friends but Ryo suddenly rings him in the last minute.
“I can’t make it, sorry Pi.”
“Can’t make it-why?”
“It’s Shige. His exams are coming up soon. He needs my help and I really want to lend him a hand.”
Pi grips tighter onto the receiver. “He said he needed your help?”
“What? No, but. You know,” Ryo says. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’ll make it to the next one, I promise.”
Pi can’t face his friends-their friends-when they ask him where Ryo is. He doesn’t meet their gaze when he gives them a rather good excuse to suffice Ryo’s lack of presence in their get-together (because he thinks Ryo doesn’t deserve a good excuse, let alone an excuse at all). Pi doesn’t look up when his name passes his lips because it’s like poison ivy, and he doesn’t want to be tainted by it either.
The apartment starts to become a little bit lonelier everyday. Gloomy, dark, murky. The streets are no better under the constant rain while Pi wonders what Ryo is doing with him. There’s a cup of tea in front of him to calm his nerves, but it isn’t working. His shoulders are tensed, and he’s sitting on the edge of his seat.
It’s already been hours.
Ryo comes home and there’s something in his smile that makes Pi so surprised and sad. He doesn’t smile back and narrows his forehead with deep creases.
“Where have you been?”
Ryo’s drenched from head to toe, and all Pi can imagine is how he has managed himself under the pouring rain.
“I was with Shige.”
And now he sees Kato with him in his mind, heads lowered under one umbrella splashing on puddles on the wet pavement. It’s a horrible thing to imagine.
“I told you to come home earlier today. We were supposed to make dinner, remember?”
Ryo doesn’t seem to remember when Pi sees that surprised look on his face. “Oh, right, right. Sorry.”
“It’s late. What do you plan to do about dinner?” he isn’t hungry, but there are several other reasons why Pi is in his worst mood at the moment. Dinner won’t help him settle his anger, nor will it help his appetite tonight.
“We can eat out, like always.”
“In this condition?” Pi points out the window, and lighting strikes in the distance. “Look at yourself, Ryo. You’re drenched.” Look at yourself, Ryo.
“Let me dry myself first, then we can order in again and have dinner together.”
It’s infuriating, all the more exasperating when the delivery boy comes with their food, hot and ready, but Ryo is yet again nowhere in the unit. Pi sits in the kitchen, waiting and waiting. He knows where Ryo is (most definitely), but he waits anyway and gives him a chance.
Ten in the evening, Ryo comes home and Pi thinks about that chance. He stows the food away in the refrigerator and gets into bed. Ryo passes by his room and it’s decided: he’s had his fill while Pi starves himself to sleep. No tears; just an empty feeling.
It’s eight in the morning when Pi is cooking himself breakfast, and there’s someone at the door. It’s Kato from upstairs, and the day feels as though it has darkened. The clock strikes half-past eight.
“Morning,” he says with his pretty smile and pretty morning hair in loose clothing and pajamas. There must be a million other adjectives in the dictionary to describe him but this is it, this is Kato-pretty Kato from upstairs-whom Ryo has left for the morning.
“Hi.” Pi drawls and rests his weight on one hip.
“Is Ryo in?”
Pi shakes his head, says nothing. They could on go all day just doing this, awkward and silent-and it feels painfully right.
“Where is he?”
Pi shrugs.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
He shrugs again. Shige bites his lips.
“You’re Yamapi, right?”
This time he doesn’t shrug-he cares enough to know who he is, after all-and gives it a thought. Pi invites him over for coffee-or tea?-but doesn’t do or say anything.
“Ryo talks about you. A lot,” he smiles and it’s somewhat pleasing altogether, the smile and Ryo often talking about him. It’s sweet, Pi decides and pictures Ryo having coffee with his new boyfriend while he talks about them racing to the bathroom in the morning, or his strange everyday habit of walking around the apartment looking for something to do, looking for someone to talk to. Pi almost laughs.
“You’re an awfully nice person, he tells me; he talks about how it’s like living with you and”-to Pi’s surprise-“somehow that makes me really jealous wondering how it’s like to live a shared life with you.”
“With Ryo, you mean.”
Kato shakes his head, tells him it’s nothing like that at all. “I don’t want to entertain those thoughts at the moment,” he explains. “It would be great with Ryo and all but it’s not the right time yet, I suppose.”
Yet. There’s a spread of blush across Kato’s face and ears when he says it, and the thought and sight of it makes Pi sneer at every cost in front of the boy. He sits idly on the counter and waits for time to pass slowly, excruciatingly.
“I know you hate me,” he suddenly says.
“I don’t hate you.”
“Well, you don’t like me.”
“I like you, Kato. I mean, not like that. You get what I mean.”
“You don’t have to lie, I know you can’t tolerate me,” he says with his eyes on the edge of the counter, purposely escaping darting and sharp eyes across the kitchen.
“How are you so sure?”
“I rob you of your time with Ryo.”
“You don’t know if that bothers me though,” but the reassuring truth is that it does. Deeply. Irrevocably.
“I’m sure it does,” he laughs and Pi grits his teeth behind a flat line of tightly pressed lips, anger and jealously and overwhelming anxiety turning into the heartache he fears of having for the longest time because this was never supposed to happen, he was never supposed to happen but he’s just so freaking brilliant in the flesh and in words altogether.
I’m never going to be like you. Perfect like you. Be you. Whom he loved for the span of lacking years-months, even-because that must really suck and now I just feel sorry for you. Really.
“Kato,” it’s the first time in awhile he’s mentioned his name and it feels so foreign, not because he hasn’t said it in awhile, nor does he refuse to say it, but it just does. “I’m Ryo’s roommate,” he pauses and tries to put a little dignity in his words. “I’m his best friend-there, that’s better-and you’re his boyfriend. I’m not meant to be in that other picture of his life so don’t try to make me fit in somewhere where I’m not supposed to belong. I’ve got my own life to live in this apartment with him, you’ve got yours elsewhere.”
The worst thing about telling him these things is the fact that he probably doesn’t care about his feelings. Empty words and maybe those are just what they really are.
“I really love him, though,” he says shyly, heart on his sleeve. “I just felt the need to say that.”
“To me? I don’t need the right words to get it; I can already tell,” by the way he looks at you, kisses you, touches you.
“I know but,” Kato smiles, “he’s just amazing like that; he knows how to take care of things, make things work for the both of us and just. You know what I mean, right? You are his roommate. And best friend.”
“You don’t know what it’s like living with him since you came into his life.”
The door clicks and creaks open, and they hear a familiar “Tadaima,” that sends them both on their feet, one faster to the door than the other to greet him with a warm “Okaeri!” Pi sighs and cleans up the horrible mess he’s left himself with in the kitchen (but he is most definitely sure that it has nothing to do with the coffee and tea; there are no water marks or spills on the counter).
He hears him-and he’s surprised to see Kato in his home-and they start talking like they’re teenagers love struck over a telephone conversation. “What have you two been up to?”
“Just chatting,” Pi says, a rather haughty smug on his face as he leans so casually against the kitchen door arc. “Trying to catch up on things. Stuff.”
Ryo smiles wide and kisses Kato’s forehead, calls him Shige and tells him he’s happy for them both. Pi feels sick, worse even when Ryo looks at him with eyes that are no longer Ryo’s, no longer the loving eyes plastered to his lover’s face as he mouths “I’m proud of you, Pi,” with a smile. It could have been worthwhile-the beautiful smile and assuring words-but Pi chooses not to see the gleam of broken promises and then get hurt by the same heartaches thereafter.
Nothing is no longer the same since then. Pi knows that Kato is still utterly convinced that he loathes him for reasons still untold and he just hates him even more for being right about that. Typically the perfect boyfriend, though not necessarily for the likes of Ryo.
Maybe he’s just selfish like that. Pi is selfish and does not want to share someone like Ryo, someone whom he’s used to loving for so long in ways more than one, afraid to ever be alone (even if he does know that he would end up alone for keeping up with such a character).
Maybe he’s just selfish like that, believing he would hurt less knowing things aren’t meant to fall into place the way he wants them to. And so he watches Ryo throw a fit for Pi’s lack of sympathy and happiness for his own, watches him pack all of his things into large suitcases as he sits by the door, waiting for words to pass between them thinking that this sort of exchange would eventually, if not instantly, be good for him.
“You’re really leaving,” he doesn’t ask nor question him. Pi doesn’t put thought into his words either.
“I can’t take this anymore, Pi,” he says with so much regret that Pi realizes he’s never seen or heard him like this ever in the years they’ve spent together, knowing each other and just being friends. “You leave me with no choice.”
“I just really couldn’t stand him,” he admits, though with no trace of defeat.
“You at least could’ve been happy for me, if not for him.”
Pi shakes his head. “I couldn’t see you with someone else.”
“You know I love him, Pi, you know I do, don’t you?”
He doesn’t move.
“And he loves me.”
“Please tell me you’re not moving somewhere directly above here.”
Ryo doesn’t know if it’s a joke, but he doesn’t consider it anyway and shakes his head. “I’m leaving, Pi. For good. And just so you know where he’s going, I am too.”
“Then you should know that I don’t feel sorry.”
“You don’t have to. I didn’t ask you to,” he lets go of his things and throws his arms around his neck one last time, tight and assuring but Pi knows that even if he’s holding just as tight, this is never going to happen again. Not in the longest while because that’s that: it’s too late now.
Ryo closes the door behind him and Pi realizes he’s lost. To the man who got away with everything without even breaking a sweat and he hates him even more for that, his aimless wit and perfect personality. Just.
A minute into the silence and stillness of the apartment Pi tells himself that maybe if he had left for other reasons, he would understand. If Ryo had left because it was between just the two of them, he would easily forgive him and then soon forget about the several years they’ve had together smiling and laughing and crying and venting out. Self-pity.
But then it wasn’t. It wasn’t just between the two of them.
author: chartre
rating: pg
pairing: nishikato
summary: kato is the name of their new neighbor. he’s perfect, and ryo didn’t care to elaborate any further.
notes: fiction. some trace hints of bitter ryopi; you'll get it once you get to it. :)
Bullets in Your Teeth
nishikato
They aren’t much. Just two insignificant individuals living together in a simple apartment, bordered by the term of their best-friendship. Everything comes, and everything goes. Someone moves in right above their unit and it’s not much news to them, so to speak.
They are more of just plain neighbors than a group of friends living in the same apartment. Someone ought to change that when the newcomer finally arrived.
Kato is the name of their new neighbor. They learn that he isn’t so different. He’s usually in between a few things; a few insignificant things, and that would make him less than the lot of what perfect is. But insignificant or not, he is perfect; the perfect newcomer with large wandering eyes, awkward beginnings and the curiosity that lingers. He’s perfect, and Ryo didn’t care to elaborate any further.
Pi hasn’t met him yet. He hasn’t seen him in the flesh, but Ryo tells him he’s beautiful, and Pi imagines a shorter-than-Ryo boy with pretty eyes, rosy cheeks and skinny shoulders. Almost like that boy named Tegoshi who lives across their apartment (just because he always catches Ryo staring at his baby face). Pi doesn’t know much and Ryo tells him he’s in love. Pi doesn’t do much but laugh a little. “Whatever, Ryo.”
The change isn’t so sudden, really. More of slow than gradual, even, and it starts with a welcoming gift of a few flowers. That isn’t a lot to take note of for a couple of non-classy guys like them.
One day Ryo comes home, keys ready in his pocket and he sees a note stuck to the front door. Under him is a bunch of fruits. Ryo reads thank you! in legible words, with his name signed right beneath it. Pi comes home later in the afternoon. There’s nothing on the front door, but behind it is a giddy and jumping Ryo, all teeth and wide smiles. “He said thanks!”
Pi rolls his eyes and doesn’t give a damn. “Whatever, Ryo.”
The following week they get invited to have dinner with Kato. Pi thinks his roommate has conspired a plot to invite himself without making it look like he invited himself. This dinner is for all three of them, really, but Pi thinks it’s a little too personal to be having neighborly dinners like this. And so he passes.
Before he even realizes it, Ryo’s out of the apartment, walking up the stairs and knocking on his door. He hears murmurs while he’s trying to catch up on reading, something like I hope you like pasta, and where’s your roommate and it’s loud enough to hear and suppose that it’s a conversation from the kitchen to the dining room. Pi tries not to listen and later regrets it when he hears a reply to that: don’t worry about him, we don’t need him.
A little too personal for a neighborly dinner.
A little too personal per se, when Pi starts to notice the quiet of the apartment without Ryo. He’s never home anymore, and he slowly realizes that he’s nowhere far from the apartment, but he’s definitely not spying on Tegoshi anymore. Pi thinks he maybe hates Ryo now.
A month passes. Four weeks, and something happens all too quickly for the bitter roommate of the presumptuous. This time, Ryo invites Kato into their apartment more often, and Pi finally meets him face to face. He’s everything Ryo earlier mentioned to the physical and objective aspect-wide eyed, broad shoulders, pouty lips and quite tall (probably too tall for Ryo)-though he’s nothing Ryo described him to be, flowery words and biases attached-pretty, cute and amiably pleasant. No, there ought to be something wrong with the man’s vision.
Pi keeps his distance from Kato; from them both, and mostly stays in the next room where he can’t see them. He doesn’t need to know him to hate him (though conveniently, he knows his name is Shigeaki; Ryo takes to calling him Shige for short), but by the way Ryo looks at him, handles him with so much care-too much care, almost like a porcelain doll-Pi feels the bitter resentment boiling beneath his skin.
A few more weeks pass. A few more waltzes out of their way and Ryo finally sits Pi down for a good, casual chat. Pi starts to feel the hate subside, slowly. Maybe he doesn’t hate them. Maybe he doesn’t hate Ryo. Maybe he’s just being a little irrational.
In the morning on their way out for a morning jog, they see Kato by the sidewalk with his dog. His hair is a mess, his clothes are worn loose, and when he turns, it’s something different with a touch of a bright something, drunken with shape and color. Pi could maybe understand Ryo’s obsession, watching his roommate walk away and towards Kato, arm slung over his shoulder and he stutters a quiet hello that’s strangely sweet, even to Pi’s ears. He is gorgeous this way, and there is probably no denying that.
But maybe, maybe Pi doesn’t understand. He still doesn’t get it.
He thinks maybe he should hate them a little more for that.
In three months, it happens. It finally happens, and Pi doesn’t think he can forgive himself, what more forgive Ryo at all.
“We’re dating,” he says and watches him smile so wide when Kato’s lips murmur his petty little secrets, their heads bent together. Pi can see it, the way Ryo holds Kato’s waist tight against his, the way his shoulders angle towards the boy and away from him. It’s disgusting, he tells himself. So he shuts the apartment door and sits quietly by himself in the bathroom.
Day by day, things slowly change. Pi can’t help but feel his rage build up slowly each day, and it’s distressful even for his own self.
They’re attending a dinner party with a few close friends but Ryo suddenly rings him in the last minute.
“I can’t make it, sorry Pi.”
“Can’t make it-why?”
“It’s Shige. His exams are coming up soon. He needs my help and I really want to lend him a hand.”
Pi grips tighter onto the receiver. “He said he needed your help?”
“What? No, but. You know,” Ryo says. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’ll make it to the next one, I promise.”
Pi can’t face his friends-their friends-when they ask him where Ryo is. He doesn’t meet their gaze when he gives them a rather good excuse to suffice Ryo’s lack of presence in their get-together (because he thinks Ryo doesn’t deserve a good excuse, let alone an excuse at all). Pi doesn’t look up when his name passes his lips because it’s like poison ivy, and he doesn’t want to be tainted by it either.
The apartment starts to become a little bit lonelier everyday. Gloomy, dark, murky. The streets are no better under the constant rain while Pi wonders what Ryo is doing with him. There’s a cup of tea in front of him to calm his nerves, but it isn’t working. His shoulders are tensed, and he’s sitting on the edge of his seat.
It’s already been hours.
Ryo comes home and there’s something in his smile that makes Pi so surprised and sad. He doesn’t smile back and narrows his forehead with deep creases.
“Where have you been?”
Ryo’s drenched from head to toe, and all Pi can imagine is how he has managed himself under the pouring rain.
“I was with Shige.”
And now he sees Kato with him in his mind, heads lowered under one umbrella splashing on puddles on the wet pavement. It’s a horrible thing to imagine.
“I told you to come home earlier today. We were supposed to make dinner, remember?”
Ryo doesn’t seem to remember when Pi sees that surprised look on his face. “Oh, right, right. Sorry.”
“It’s late. What do you plan to do about dinner?” he isn’t hungry, but there are several other reasons why Pi is in his worst mood at the moment. Dinner won’t help him settle his anger, nor will it help his appetite tonight.
“We can eat out, like always.”
“In this condition?” Pi points out the window, and lighting strikes in the distance. “Look at yourself, Ryo. You’re drenched.” Look at yourself, Ryo.
“Let me dry myself first, then we can order in again and have dinner together.”
It’s infuriating, all the more exasperating when the delivery boy comes with their food, hot and ready, but Ryo is yet again nowhere in the unit. Pi sits in the kitchen, waiting and waiting. He knows where Ryo is (most definitely), but he waits anyway and gives him a chance.
Ten in the evening, Ryo comes home and Pi thinks about that chance. He stows the food away in the refrigerator and gets into bed. Ryo passes by his room and it’s decided: he’s had his fill while Pi starves himself to sleep. No tears; just an empty feeling.
It’s eight in the morning when Pi is cooking himself breakfast, and there’s someone at the door. It’s Kato from upstairs, and the day feels as though it has darkened. The clock strikes half-past eight.
“Morning,” he says with his pretty smile and pretty morning hair in loose clothing and pajamas. There must be a million other adjectives in the dictionary to describe him but this is it, this is Kato-pretty Kato from upstairs-whom Ryo has left for the morning.
“Hi.” Pi drawls and rests his weight on one hip.
“Is Ryo in?”
Pi shakes his head, says nothing. They could on go all day just doing this, awkward and silent-and it feels painfully right.
“Where is he?”
Pi shrugs.
“Do you know when he’ll be back?”
He shrugs again. Shige bites his lips.
“You’re Yamapi, right?”
This time he doesn’t shrug-he cares enough to know who he is, after all-and gives it a thought. Pi invites him over for coffee-or tea?-but doesn’t do or say anything.
“Ryo talks about you. A lot,” he smiles and it’s somewhat pleasing altogether, the smile and Ryo often talking about him. It’s sweet, Pi decides and pictures Ryo having coffee with his new boyfriend while he talks about them racing to the bathroom in the morning, or his strange everyday habit of walking around the apartment looking for something to do, looking for someone to talk to. Pi almost laughs.
“You’re an awfully nice person, he tells me; he talks about how it’s like living with you and”-to Pi’s surprise-“somehow that makes me really jealous wondering how it’s like to live a shared life with you.”
“With Ryo, you mean.”
Kato shakes his head, tells him it’s nothing like that at all. “I don’t want to entertain those thoughts at the moment,” he explains. “It would be great with Ryo and all but it’s not the right time yet, I suppose.”
Yet. There’s a spread of blush across Kato’s face and ears when he says it, and the thought and sight of it makes Pi sneer at every cost in front of the boy. He sits idly on the counter and waits for time to pass slowly, excruciatingly.
“I know you hate me,” he suddenly says.
“I don’t hate you.”
“Well, you don’t like me.”
“I like you, Kato. I mean, not like that. You get what I mean.”
“You don’t have to lie, I know you can’t tolerate me,” he says with his eyes on the edge of the counter, purposely escaping darting and sharp eyes across the kitchen.
“How are you so sure?”
“I rob you of your time with Ryo.”
“You don’t know if that bothers me though,” but the reassuring truth is that it does. Deeply. Irrevocably.
“I’m sure it does,” he laughs and Pi grits his teeth behind a flat line of tightly pressed lips, anger and jealously and overwhelming anxiety turning into the heartache he fears of having for the longest time because this was never supposed to happen, he was never supposed to happen but he’s just so freaking brilliant in the flesh and in words altogether.
I’m never going to be like you. Perfect like you. Be you. Whom he loved for the span of lacking years-months, even-because that must really suck and now I just feel sorry for you. Really.
“Kato,” it’s the first time in awhile he’s mentioned his name and it feels so foreign, not because he hasn’t said it in awhile, nor does he refuse to say it, but it just does. “I’m Ryo’s roommate,” he pauses and tries to put a little dignity in his words. “I’m his best friend-there, that’s better-and you’re his boyfriend. I’m not meant to be in that other picture of his life so don’t try to make me fit in somewhere where I’m not supposed to belong. I’ve got my own life to live in this apartment with him, you’ve got yours elsewhere.”
The worst thing about telling him these things is the fact that he probably doesn’t care about his feelings. Empty words and maybe those are just what they really are.
“I really love him, though,” he says shyly, heart on his sleeve. “I just felt the need to say that.”
“To me? I don’t need the right words to get it; I can already tell,” by the way he looks at you, kisses you, touches you.
“I know but,” Kato smiles, “he’s just amazing like that; he knows how to take care of things, make things work for the both of us and just. You know what I mean, right? You are his roommate. And best friend.”
“You don’t know what it’s like living with him since you came into his life.”
The door clicks and creaks open, and they hear a familiar “Tadaima,” that sends them both on their feet, one faster to the door than the other to greet him with a warm “Okaeri!” Pi sighs and cleans up the horrible mess he’s left himself with in the kitchen (but he is most definitely sure that it has nothing to do with the coffee and tea; there are no water marks or spills on the counter).
He hears him-and he’s surprised to see Kato in his home-and they start talking like they’re teenagers love struck over a telephone conversation. “What have you two been up to?”
“Just chatting,” Pi says, a rather haughty smug on his face as he leans so casually against the kitchen door arc. “Trying to catch up on things. Stuff.”
Ryo smiles wide and kisses Kato’s forehead, calls him Shige and tells him he’s happy for them both. Pi feels sick, worse even when Ryo looks at him with eyes that are no longer Ryo’s, no longer the loving eyes plastered to his lover’s face as he mouths “I’m proud of you, Pi,” with a smile. It could have been worthwhile-the beautiful smile and assuring words-but Pi chooses not to see the gleam of broken promises and then get hurt by the same heartaches thereafter.
Nothing is no longer the same since then. Pi knows that Kato is still utterly convinced that he loathes him for reasons still untold and he just hates him even more for being right about that. Typically the perfect boyfriend, though not necessarily for the likes of Ryo.
Maybe he’s just selfish like that. Pi is selfish and does not want to share someone like Ryo, someone whom he’s used to loving for so long in ways more than one, afraid to ever be alone (even if he does know that he would end up alone for keeping up with such a character).
Maybe he’s just selfish like that, believing he would hurt less knowing things aren’t meant to fall into place the way he wants them to. And so he watches Ryo throw a fit for Pi’s lack of sympathy and happiness for his own, watches him pack all of his things into large suitcases as he sits by the door, waiting for words to pass between them thinking that this sort of exchange would eventually, if not instantly, be good for him.
“You’re really leaving,” he doesn’t ask nor question him. Pi doesn’t put thought into his words either.
“I can’t take this anymore, Pi,” he says with so much regret that Pi realizes he’s never seen or heard him like this ever in the years they’ve spent together, knowing each other and just being friends. “You leave me with no choice.”
“I just really couldn’t stand him,” he admits, though with no trace of defeat.
“You at least could’ve been happy for me, if not for him.”
Pi shakes his head. “I couldn’t see you with someone else.”
“You know I love him, Pi, you know I do, don’t you?”
He doesn’t move.
“And he loves me.”
“Please tell me you’re not moving somewhere directly above here.”
Ryo doesn’t know if it’s a joke, but he doesn’t consider it anyway and shakes his head. “I’m leaving, Pi. For good. And just so you know where he’s going, I am too.”
“Then you should know that I don’t feel sorry.”
“You don’t have to. I didn’t ask you to,” he lets go of his things and throws his arms around his neck one last time, tight and assuring but Pi knows that even if he’s holding just as tight, this is never going to happen again. Not in the longest while because that’s that: it’s too late now.
Ryo closes the door behind him and Pi realizes he’s lost. To the man who got away with everything without even breaking a sweat and he hates him even more for that, his aimless wit and perfect personality. Just.
A minute into the silence and stillness of the apartment Pi tells himself that maybe if he had left for other reasons, he would understand. If Ryo had left because it was between just the two of them, he would easily forgive him and then soon forget about the several years they’ve had together smiling and laughing and crying and venting out. Self-pity.
But then it wasn’t. It wasn’t just between the two of them.